Jean Christophe: In Paris by Romain Rolland

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Christophe used to borrow books from both of them and, with a want ofceremony which shocked Olivier, he used to lend their books in turn to theother. The Abbe Corneille was not at all scandalized: he had an intuitiveperception of the quality of a man: and, without seeming to do so, he hadmarked the generous and even unconsciously religious nature of his youngneighbor. A book by Kropotkin, which had been borrowed from M. Watelet, andfor different reasons had given great pleasure to all three of them, beganthe process of bringing them together. It chanced one evening that they metin Christophe's room. At first Christophe was afraid that they might berude to each other: but, on the contrary, they were perfectly polite, Theydiscussed various sage subjects: their travels, and their experience ofmen. And they discovered in each other a fund of gentleness and the spiritof the Gospels, and chimerical hopes, in spite of the many reasons thateach had for despair, They discovered a mutual sympathy, mingled with alittle irony. Their sympathy was of a very discreet nature. They neverrevealed their fundamental beliefs. They rarely met and did not try tomeet: but when they did so they were glad to see each other.

Of the two men the Abbe Corneille was not the least independent of mind,though Christophe would never have thought it. He gradually came toperceive the greatness of the religious and yet free ideas, the immense,serene, and unfevered mysticism which permeated the priest's whole mind,the every action of his daily life, and his whole outlook on theworld,--leading him to live in Christ, as he believed that Christ had livedin God.

He denied nothing, no single element of life. To him the whole ofScripture, ancient and modern, lay and religious, from Moses to Berthelot,was certain, divine, the very expression of God. Holy Writ was to him onlyits richest example, just as the Church was the highest company of menunited in the brotherhood of God: but in neither of them was the spiritconfined in any fixed, unchanging truth. Christianity was the livingChrist. The history of the world was only the history of the perpetualadvance of the idea of God. The fall of the Jewish Temple, the ruin of thepagan world, the repulse of the Crusades, the humiliation of Boniface VIII,Galileo flinging the world back into giddy space, the infinitely littlebecoming more mighty than the great, the downfall of kingdoms, and the endof the Concordats, all these for a time threw the minds of men out of theirreckoning. Some clung desperately to the passing order: some caught at aplank and drifted. The Abbe Corneille only asked: "Where do we stand asmen? Where is that which makes us live?" For he believed: "Where life is,there is God."--And that was why he was in sympathy with Christophe.

For his part, Christophe was glad once more to hear the splendid music of agreat religious soul. It awoke in him echoes distant and profound. Throughthe feeling of perpetual reaction, which is in vigorous natures a vitalinstinct, the instinct of self-preservation, the stroke which preservesthe quivering balance of the boat, and gives it a new drive onward,--hissurfeit of doubts and his disgust with Parisian sensuality had for the lasttwo years been slowly restoring God to his place in Christophe's heart. Notthat he believed in God. He denied God. But he was filled with the spiritof God. The Abbe Corneille used to tell him with a smile, that like hisnamesake, the sainted giant, he bore God on his shoulders without knowingit.

"How is it that I don't see it then?" Christophe would ask.

"You are like thousands of others: you see God every day, and never knowthat it is He. God reveals Himself to all, in every shape,--to some Heappears in their daily life, as He did to Saint Peter in Galilee,--toothers (like your friend M. Watelet), as He did to Saint Thomas, in woundsand suffering that call for healing,--to you in the dignity of your ideal:_Noli me tangere_.... Some day you will know it."

"I will never surrender," said Christophe. "I am free. Free I shallremain."

"Only the more will you live in God," replied the priest calmly.

But Christophe would not submit to being made out a Christian against hiswill. He defended himself ardently and simply, as though it mattered in theleast whether one label more than another was plastered on to his ideas.The Abbe Corneille would listen with a faint ecclesiastical irony, that washardly perceptible, while it was altogether kindly. He had an inexhaustiblefund of patience, based on his habit of faith. It had been tempered by thetrials to which the existing Church had exposed him: while it had made himprofoundly melancholy, and had even dragged him through terrible moralcrises, he had not really been touched by it all. It was cruel to sufferthe oppression of his superiors, to have his every action spied upon bythe Bishops, and watched by the free-thinkers, who were endeavoring toexploit his ideas, to use him as a weapon against his own faith, and tobe misunderstood and attacked both by his co-religionists and the enemiesof his religion. It was impossible for him to offer any resistance: forsubmission was enforced upon him. It was impossible for him to submit inhis heart: for he knew that the authorities were wrong. It was agony forhim to hold his peace. It was agony for him to speak and to be wronglyinterpreted. Not to mention the soul for which he was responsible, he hadto think of those, who looked to him for counsel and help, while he had tostand by and see them suffer.... The Abbe Corneille suffered both for themand for himself, but he was resigned. He knew how small a thing were thedays of trial in the long history of the Church.--Only, by dint of beingturned in upon himself in his silent resignation, slowly he lost heart, andbecame timid and afraid to speak, so that it became more and more difficultfor him to do anything, and little by little the torpor of silence creptover him. Meeting Christophe had given him new courage. His neighbor'syouthful ardor and the affectionate and simple interest which he took inhis doings, his sometimes indiscreet questions, did him a great deal ofgood. Christophe forced him to mix once more with living men and women.

Aubert, the journeyman electrician, once met him in Christophe's room. Hestarted back when he saw the priest, and found it hard to conceal hisfeeling of dislike. Even when he had overcome his first inclination, he wasuncomfortable and oddly embarrassed at finding himself in the company of aman in a cassock, a creature to whom he could attach no exact definition.However, his sociable instincts and the pleasure he always found in talkingto educated men were stronger than his anti-clericalism. He was surprisedby the pleasant relations existing between M. Watelet and the AbbeCorneille: he was no less surprised to find a priest who was a democrat,and a revolutionary who was an aristocrat: it upset all his preconceivedideas. He tried vainly to classify them in any social category: for healways had to classify people before he could begin to understand them. Itwas not easy to find a pigeon-hole for the peaceful freedom of mind of apriest who had read Anatole France and Renan, and was prepared to discussthem calmly, justly, and with some knowledge. In matters of science theAbbe Corneille's way was to accept the guidance of those who knew, ratherthan of those who laid down the law. He respected authority, but in hiseyes it stood lower than knowledge. The flesh, the spirit, and charity:the three orders, the three rungs of the divine ladder, the ladder ofJacob.--Of course, honest Aubert was far, indeed, from understanding, oreven from dreaming, of the possibility of such a state of mind. The AbbeCorneille used to tell Christophe that Aubert reminded him of certainFrench peasants whom he had seen one day. A young Englishwoman had askedthem the way, in English. They listened solemnly, but did not understand.Then they spoke in French. She did not understand. Then they looked at eachother pityingly, and wagged their heads, and went on with their work, andsaid:

"What a pity! What a pity! Such a pretty girl, too!..."

As though they had thought her deaf, or dumb, or soft in the head....

At first Aubert was abashed by the knowledge and distinguished manners ofthe priest and M. Watelet, and sat mum, listening intently to what theysaid. Then, little by little, he joined in the conversation, giving way tothe naive pleasure that he found in hearing himself speak. He paraded hisgenerous store of rather vague ideas. The other two would listen politely,and smile inwardly. Aubert was delighted, and could not hold himself in:he took advantage of, and presently abused, the inexhaustible patience ofthe Abbe Corneille. He read his literary productions to him. The priestlistened resignedly; and it did not bore him overmuch, for he listened notso much to the words as to the man. And then he would reply to Christophe'scommiseration:

"Bah! I hear so many of them!"

Aubert was grateful to M. Watelet and the Abbe Corneille: and, withouttaking much trouble to understand each other's ideas, or even to find outwhat they were, the three of them became very good friends without exactlyknowing why. They were very surprised to find themselves so intimate. Theywould never have thought it.--Christophe was the bond between them.

He had other innocent allies in the three children, the two littleElsbergers and M. Watelet's adopted daughter. He was great friends withthem: they adored him. He told each of them about the other, and gave theman irresistible longing to know each other. They used to make signs to eachother from the windows, and spoke to each other furtively on the stairs.Aided and abetted by Christophe, they even managed to get permissionsometimes to meet in the Luxembourg Gardens. Christophe was delighted withthe success of his guile, and went to see them there the first time theywere together: they were shy and embarrassed, and hardly knew what to makeof their new happiness. He broke down their reserve in a moment, andinvented games for them, and races, and played hide-and-seek: he joined inas keenly as though he were a child of ten: the passers-by cast amused andquizzical glances at the great big fellow, running and shouting and dodginground trees, with three little girls after him. And as their parents werestill suspicious of each other, and showed no great readiness to let theseexcursions to the Luxembourg Gardens occur very often--(because it keptthem too far out of sight)--Christophe managed to get Commandant Chabran,who lived on the ground floor, to invite the children to play in the gardenbelonging to the house.

Chance had thrown Christophe and the old soldier together:--(chance alwayssingles out those who can turn it to account).--Christophe's writing-tablewas near his window. One day the wind blew a few sheets of music down intothe garden. Christophe rushed down, bareheaded and disheveled, just as hewas, without even taking the trouble to brush his hair. He thought he wouldonly have to see a servant. However, the daughter opened the door to him.He was rather taken aback, but told her what he had come for. She smiledand let him in: they went into the garden. When he had picked up his papershe was for hurrying away, and she was taking him to the door, when they metthe old soldier. The Commandant gazed at his odd visitor in some surprise.His daughter laughed, and introduced him.

"Ah! So you are the musician?" said the old soldier. "We are comrades."

They shook hands. They talked in a friendly, bantering tone of the concertsthey gave together, Christophe with his piano, the Commandant with hisflute. Christophe tried to go, but the old man would not let him: and heplunged blindly into a disquisition on music. Suddenly he stopped short,and said:

"Come and see my canons."

Christophe followed him, wondering how anybody could be interested inanything he might think about French artillery. The old man showed him intriumph a number of musical canons, amazing productions, compositions thatmight just as well be read upside down, or played as duets, one personplaying the right-hand page, and the other the left. The Commandant was anold pupil of the Polytechnic, and had always had a taste for music: butwhat he loved most of all in it was the mathematical problem: it seemedto him--(as up to a point it is)--a magnificent mental gymnastic: andhe racked his brains in the invention and solution of puzzles in theconstruction of music, each more useless and extravagant than the last. Ofcourse, his military career had not left him much time for the developmentof his mania: but since his retirement he had thrown himself into it withenthusiasm: he expended on it all the energy and ingenuity which he hadpreviously employed in pursuing the hordes of negro kings through thedeserts of Africa, or avoiding their traps. Christophe found his puzzlesquite amusing, and set him a more complicated one to solve. The old soldierwas delighted: they vied with one another: they produced a perfect showerof musical riddles. After they had been playing the game for some time,Christophe went upstairs to his own room. But the very next morning hisneighbor sent him a new problem, a regular teaser, at which the Commandanthad been working half the night: he replied with another: and the duel wenton until Christophe, who was getting tired of it, declared himself beaten:at which the old soldier was perfectly delighted. He regarded his successas a retaliation on Germany. He invited Christophe to lunch. Christophe'sfrankness in telling the old soldier that he detested his musicalcompositions, and shouting in protest when Chabran began to murder an_andante_ of Haydn on his harmonium, completed the conquest. From that timeon they often met to talk. But not about music. Christophe could not summonup any great interest in his neighbor's crotchety notions about it, andmuch preferred getting him to talk about military subjects. The Commandantasked nothing better: music was only a forced amusement for the unhappyman: in reality, he was fretting his life out.

He was easily led on to yarn about his African campaigns. Giganticadventures worthy of the tales of a Pizarro and a Cortez! Christophe wasdelighted with the vivid narrative of that marvelous and barbaric epic, ofwhich he knew nothing, and almost every Frenchman is ignorant: the tale ofthe twenty years during which the heroism, and courage, and inventiveness,and superhuman energy of a conquering handful of Frenchmen were spent faraway in the depths of the Black Continent, where they were surroundedby armies of negroes, where they were deprived of the most rudimentaryarms of war, and yet, in the face of public opinion and a panic-strickenGovernment, in spite of France, conquered for France an empire greater thanFrance itself. There was the flavor of a mighty joy, a flavor of blood inthe tale, from which, in Christophe's mind's eye, there sprang the figuresof modern _condottieri_, heroic adventurers, unlooked for in the France ofto-day, whom the France of to-day is ashamed to own, so that she modestlydraws a veil over them. The Commandant's voice would ring out bravelyas he recalled it all: and he would jovially recount, with learneddescriptions--(oddly interpolated in his epic narrative)--of the geologicalstructure of the country, in cold, precise terms, the story of thetremendous marches, and the charges at full gallop, and the man-hunts, inwhich he had been hunter and quarry, turn and turn about, in a struggle tothe death.--Christophe would listen and watch his face, and feel a greatpity for such a splendid human animal, condemned to inaction, and forced tospend his time in playing ridiculous games. He wondered how he could everhave become resigned to such a lot. He asked the old man how he had doneit. The Commandant was at first not at all inclined to let a strangerinto his confidence as to his grievances. But the French are naturallyloquacious, especially when they have a chance of pitching into each other:

"What on earth should I do," he said, "in the army as it is to-day? Themarines write books. The infantry study sociology. They do everything butmake war. They don't even prepare for it: they prepare never to go to waragain: they study the philosophy of war.... The philosophy of war! That'sa game for beasts of burden wondering how much thrashing they are going toget!... Discussing, philosophizing, no, that's not my work. Much betterstay at home and go on with my canons!"

He was too much ashamed to air the most serious of his grievances: thesuspicion created among the officers by the appeal to informers, thehumiliation of having to submit to the insolent orders of certain crass andmischievous politicians, the army's disgust at being put to base policeduty, taking inventories of the churches, putting down industrial strikes,at the bidding of capital and the spite of the party in power--the pettyburgess radicals and anti-clericals--against the rest of the country. Notto speak of the old African's disgust with the new Colonial Army, which wasfor the most part recruited from the lowest elements of the nation, by wayof pandering to the egoism and cowardice of the rest, who refuse to sharein the honor and the risks of securing the defense of "greaterFrance"--France beyond the seas.

Christophe was not concerned with these French quarrels: they were noaffair of his: but he sympathized with the old soldier. Whatever he mightthink of war, it seemed to him that an army was meant to produce soldiers,as an apple-tree to produce apples, and that it was a strange perversion tograft on to it politicians, esthetes, and sociologists. And yet he couldnot understand how a man of such vigor could give way to his adversaries.It is to be his own worst enemy for a man not to fight his enemies. Inall French people of any worth at all there was a spirit of surrender, astrange temper of renunciation.--To Christophe it was even more profound,and even more touching as it existed in the old soldier's daughter.

Her name was Celine. She had beautiful hair, plaited and braided so asto set off her high, round forehead and her rather pointed ears, herthin cheeks, and her pretty chin: she was like a country girl, with fineintelligent dark eyes, very trustful, very soft, rather short-sighted: hernose was a little too large, and she had a tiny mole on her upper lip bythe corner of her mouth, and she had a quiet smile which made her poutprettily and thrust out her lower lip, which was a little protruding. Shewas kind, active, clever, but she had no curiosity of mind. She read verylittle, and never any of the newest books, never went to the theater, nevertraveled,--(for traveling bored her father, who had had too much of itin the old days),--never had anything to do with any polite charitablework,--(her father used to condemn all such things),--made no attempt tostudy,--(he used to make fun of blue stockings),--hardly ever left herlittle patch of garden inclosed by its four high walls, so that it was likebeing at the bottom of a deep well. And yet she was not really bored. Sheoccupied her time as best she could, and was good-tempered and resigned.About her and about the setting which every woman unconsciously createsfor herself wherever she may be, there was a Chardinesque atmosphere: thesame soft silence, the same tranquil expression, the same attitude ofabsorption--(a little drowsy and languid)--in the common task: the poetryof the daily round, of the accustomed way of life, with its fixed thoughtsand actions, falling into exactly the same place at exactly the sametime--thoughts and actions which are cherished none the less with anall-pervading tranquil gentleness: the serene mediocrity of the fine-souledwomen of the middle-class: honest, conscientious, truthful, calm--calm intheir pleasures, unruffled in their labors, and yet poetic in all theirqualities. They are healthy and neat and tidy, clean in body and mind: alltheir lives are sweetened with the scent of good bread, and lavender, andintegrity, and kindness. There is peace in all that they are and do, thepeace of old houses and smiling souls....

Christophe, whose affectionate trustfulness invited trust, had become veryfriendly with her: they used to talk quite frankly: and he even went so faras to ask her certain questions, which she was surprised to find herselfanswering: she would tell him things which she had not told anybody, evenher most intimate friends.

"You see," Christophe would say, "you're not afraid of me. There's nodanger of our falling in love with each other: we're too good friends forthat."

"You're very polite!" she would answer with a laugh.

Her healthy nature recoiled as much as Christophe's from philanderingfriendship, that form of sentimentality dear to equivocal men and women,who are always juggling with their emotions. They were just comrades one toanother.

He asked her one day what she was doing in the afternoons, when he saw hersitting in the garden with her work on her knees, never touching it, andnot stirring for hours together. She blushed, and protested that it was nota matter of hours, but only a matter of a few minutes, perhaps a quarter ofan hour, during which she "went on with her story."

"What story?"

"The story I am always telling myself."

"You tell yourself stories? Oh, tell them to me!"

She told him that he was too curious. She would only go so far as tointimate that they were stories of which she was not the heroine.

He was surprised at that:

"If you are going to tell yourself stories, it seems to me that it would bemore natural if you told your own story with embellishments, and lived in ahappier dream-life."

"I couldn't," she said. "If I did that, I should become desperate."

She blushed again at having revealed even so much of her inmost thoughts:and she went on:

"Besides, when I am in the garden and a gust of wind reaches me, I amhappy. Then the garden becomes alive for me. And when the wind blusters andcomes from a great distance, he tells me so many things!"

In spite of her reserve, Christophe could see the hidden depths ofmelancholy that lay behind her good-humor, and the restless activity which,as she knew perfectly well, led nowhere. Why did she not try to break awayfrom her condition and emancipate herself? She would have been so wellfitted for a useful and active life!--But she alleged her affection for herfather, who would not hear of her leaving him. In vain did Christophe tellher that the old soldier was perfectly vigorous and energetic, and had noneed of her, and that a man of his stamp could quite well be left alone,and had no right to make a sacrifice of her. She would begin to defend herfather: by a pious fiction she would pretend that it was not her fatherwho was forcing her to stay, but she herself who could not bear to leavehim.--And, up to a point, what she said was true. It seemed to have beenaccepted from time immemorial by herself, and her fatter, and all theirfriends that their life had to be thus and thus, and not otherwise. Shehad a married brother, who thought it quite natural that she should devoteher life to their father in his stead. He was entirely wrapped up in hischildren. He loved them jealously, and left them no will of their own. Hislove for his children was to him, and especially to his wife, a voluntarybondage which weighed heavily on their life, and cramped all theirmovements: his idea seemed to be that as soon as a man has children, hisown life comes to an end, and he has to stop short in his own development:he was still young, active, and intelligent, and there he was reckoning upthe years he would have still to work before he could retire.--Christophesaw how these good people were weighed down by the atmosphere of familyaffection, which is so deep-rooted in France--deep-rooted, but stifling anddestructive of vitality. And it has become all the more oppressive sincefamilies in France have been reduced to the minimum: father, mother, oneor two children, and here and there, perhaps, an uncle or an aunt. It isa cowardly, fearful love, turned in upon itself, like a miser clingingtightly to his hoard of gold.

A fortuitous circumstance gave Christophe a yet greater interest in thegirl, and showed him the full extent of the suppression of the emotionsof the French, their fear of life, of letting themselves go, and claimingtheir birthright.

Elsberger, the engineer, had a brother ten years younger than himself,likewise an engineer. He was a very good fellow, like thousands of others,of the middle-class, and he had artistic aspirations: he was one of thosepeople who would like to practise an art, but are afraid of compromisingtheir reputation and position. As a matter of fact, it is not a verydifficult problem, and most of the artists of to-day have solved itwithout any great danger to themselves. But it needs a certain amount ofwill-power: and not everybody is capable of even that much expenditure ofenergy: such people are not sure enough of wanting what they really want:and as their position in life grows more assured, they submit and driftalong, without any show of revolt or protest. They cannot be blamed if theybecome good citizens instead of bad artists. But their disappointment toooften leaves behind it a secret discontent, a _qualis artifex pereo_, whichas best it can assumes a crust of what is usually called philosophy, andspoils their lives, until the wear and tear of daily life and new anxietieshave erased all trace of the old bitterness. Such was the case of AndreElsberger. He would have liked to be a writer: but his brother, who wasvery self-willed, had made him follow in his footsteps and enter upon ascientific career. Andre was clever, and quite well equipped for scientificwork--or for literature, for that matter: he was not sure enough ofbeing an artist, and he was too sure that he was middle-class: and so,provisionally at first,--(one knows what that means)--he had bowed to hisbrother's wishes: he entered the _Centrale_, high up in the list, andpassed out equally high, and since then he had practised his profession asan engineer conscientiously, but without being interested in it. Of course,he had lost the little artistic quality that he had possessed, and he neverspoke of it except ironically.

"And then," he used to say--(Christophe recognized Olivier's pessimistictendency in his arguments)--"life is not good enough to make one worryabout a spoiled career. What does a bad poet more or less matter!..."

The brothers were fond of one another: they were of the same stamp morally:but they did not get on well together. They had both been Dreyfus-mad. ButAndre was attracted by syndicalism, and was an anti-militarist: and Eliewas a patriot.

From time to time Andre would visit Christophe without going to see hisbrother: and that astonished Christophe: for there was no great sympathybetween himself and Andre, who used hardly ever to open his mouth exceptto gird at something or somebody,--which was very tiresome: and whenChristophe said anything, Andre would not listen. Christophe made no effortto conceal the fact that he found his visits a nuisance: but Andre did notmind, and seemed not to notice it. At last Christophe found the key to theriddle one day when he found his visitor leaning out of the window, andpaying much more attention to what was happening in the garden below thanto what he was saying. He remarked upon it, and Andre was not reluctant toadmit that he knew Mademoiselle Chabran, and that she had something to dowith his visits to Christophe. And, his tongue being, loosed, he confessedthat he had long been attached to the girl, and perhaps something more thanthat: the Elsbergers had long ago been in close touch with the Chabrans:but, though they had been very intimate, politics and recent eventshad separated them: and thereafter they saw very little of each other.Christophe did not disguise his opinion that it was an idiotic state ofthings. Was it impossible for people to think differently, and yet toretain their mutual esteem? Andre said he thought it was, and protestedthat he was very broad-minded: but he would not admit the possibility oftolerance in certain questions, concerning which, he said, he could notadmit any opinion different from his own: and he instanced the famousAffair. On that, as usual, he became wild. Christophe knew the sort ofthing that happened in that connection, and made no attempt to argue: buthe; asked whether the Affair was never going to come to an end, or whetherits curse was to go on and on to the end of time, descending even unto thethird and fourth generation. Andre began to laugh: and without answeringChristophe, he fell to tender praise of Celine Chabran, and protestedagainst her father's selfishness, who thought it quite natural that sheshould be sacrificed to him.

"Why don't you marry her," asked Christophe, "if you love her and she lovesyou?"

Andre said mournfully that Celine was clerical. Christophe asked what hemeant by that. Andre replied that he meant that she was religious, and hadvowed a sort of feudal service to God and His bonzes.

"But how does that affect you?"

"I don't want to share my wife with any one."

"What! You are jealous even of your wife's ideas? Why, you're more selfisheven than the Commandant!"

"It's all very well for you to talk: would you take a woman who did notlove music?"

"I have done so."

"How can a man and a woman live together if they don't think the same?"

"Don't you worry about what you think! Ah! my dear fellow, ideas count forso little when one loves. What does it matter to me whether the woman Ilove cares for music as much as I do? She herself is music to me! When aman has the luck, as you have, to find a dear girl whom he loves, and sheloves him, she must believe what she likes, and he must believe what helikes! When all is said and done, what do your ideas amount to? There isonly one truth in the world, there is only one God: love."

"You speak like a poet. You don't see life as it is. I know only too manymarriages which have suffered from such a want of union in thought."

"Those husbands and wives did not love each other enough. You have to knowwhat you want."

"Wanting does not do everything in life. Even if I wanted to marryMademoiselle Chabran, I couldn't."

"I'd like to know why."

Andre spoke of his scruples: his position was not assured: he had nofortune and no great health. He was wondering whether he had the right tomarry in such circumstances. It was a great responsibility. Was there not agreat risk of bringing unhappiness on the woman he loved, and himself,--notto mention any children there might be?... It was better to wait--or giveup the idea.

Christophe shrugged his shoulders.

"That's a fine sort of love! If she loves you, she will be happy in herdevotion to you. And as for the children, you French people are absurd. Youwould like only to bring them into the world when you are sure of turningthem out with comfortable private means, so that they will have nothing tosuffer and nothing to fear.... Good Lord! That's nothing to do with you:your business is only to give them life, love of life, and courage todefend it. The rest ... whether they live or die ... is the common lot. Isit better to give up living than to take the risks of life?"

The sturdy confidence which emanated from Christophe affected Andre, butdid not change his mind. He said:

"Yes, perhaps, that is true...."

But he stopped at that. Like all the rest, his will and power of actionseemed to be paralyzed.

* * * * *

Christophe had set himself to fight the inertia which he found In mostof his French friends, oddly coupled with laborious and often feverishactivity. Almost all the people he met in the various middle-class houseswhich he visited were discontented. They had almost all the same disgustwith the demagogues and their corrupt ideas. In almost all there was thesame sorrowful and proud consciousness of the betrayal of the genius oftheir race. And it was by no means the result of any personal rancor northe bitterness of men and classes beaten and thrust out of power and activelife, or discharged officials, or unemployed energy, nor that of an oldaristocracy which has returned to its estates, there to die in hiding likea wounded lion. It was a feeling of moral revolt, mute, profound, general:it was to be found everywhere, in a greater or less degree, in the army, inthe magistracy, in the University, in the officers, and in every vitalbranch of the machinery of government. But they took no active measures.They were discouraged in advance: they kept on saying:

"There is nothing to be done:"

or

"Let us try not to think of it."

Fearfully they dodged anything sad in their thoughts and conversation: andthey took refuge in their home life.

If they had been content to refrain only from political action! But evenin their daily lives these good people had no interest in doing anythingdefinite. They put up with the degrading, haphazard contact with horriblepeople whom they despised, because they could not take the trouble to fightagainst them, thinking that any such revolt must of necessity be useless.Why, for instance, should artists, and, in particular, the musicianswith whom Christophe was most in touch, unprotestingly put up with theeffrontery of the scaramouches of the Press, who laid down the law forthem? There were absolute idiots among them, whose ignorance _in omni rescibili_ was proverbial, though they were none the less invested witha sovereign authority _in omni re scibili_. They did not even take thetrouble to write their articles and books: they had secretaries, poorstarving creatures, who would have sold their souls, if they had had suchthings, for bread or women. There was no secret about it in Paris. Andyet they went on riding their high horse and patronizing the artists.Christophe used to roar with anger sometimes when he read their articles.

"They have no heart!" he would say. "Oh! the cowards!"

"Who are you screaming at?" Olivier would ask. "The idiots of themarket-place?"

"No. The honest men. These rascals are plying their trade: they lie, theysteal, they rob and murder. But it is the others--those who despise themand yet let them go on--that I despise a thousand times more. If theircolleagues on the Press, if honest, cultured critics, and the artists onwhose backs these harlequins strut and poise themselves, did not put upwith it, in silence, from shyness or fear of compromising themselves, orfrom some shameful anticipation of mutual service, a sort of secret pactmade with the enemy so that they may be immune from their attacks,--if theydid not let them preen themselves in their patronage and friendship, theirupstart power would soon be killed by ridicule. There's the same weaknessin everything, everywhere. I've met twenty honest men who have said to meof so-and-so: 'He is a scoundrel.' But there is not one of them who wouldnot refer to him as his 'dear colleague,' and, if he met him, shake handswith him.--'There are too many of them!' they say.--Too many cowards. Toomany flabby honest men."

"Eh! What do you want them to do?"

"Be every man his own policeman! What are you waiting for? For Heaven totake your affairs in hand? Look you, at this very moment. It is three daysnow since the snow fell. Your streets are thick with it, and your Paris islike a sewer of mud. What do you do? You protest against your MunicipalCouncil for leaving you in such a state of filth. But do you yourselves doanything to clear it away? Not a bit of it! You sit with your arms folded.Not one of you has energy enough even to clean the pavement in front ofhis house. Nobody does his duty, neither the State nor the members of theState: each man thinks he has done as much as is expected of him by layingthe blame on some one else. You have become so used, through centuries ofmonarchical training, to doing nothing for yourselves that you all seem tospend your time in star-gazing and waiting for a miracle to happen. Theonly miracle that could happen would be if you all suddenly made up yourminds to do something. My dear Olivier, you French people have plenty ofbrains and plenty of good qualities: but you lack blood. You most of all.There's nothing the matter with your mind or your heart. It's your lifethat's all wrong. You're sputtering out."

"What can we do? We can only wait for life to return to us."

"You must want life to return to you. You must want to be cured. You must_want_, use your will! And if you are to do that you must first let in somepure air into your houses. If you won't go out of doors, then at leastyou must keep your houses healthy. You have let the air be poisoned bythe unwholesome vapors of the market-place. Your art and your ideas aretwo-thirds adulterated. And you are so dispirited that it hardly occasionsyou any surprise, and rouses you to no sort of indignation. Some of thesegood people--(it is pitiful to see)--are so cowed that they actuallypersuade themselves that they are wrong and the charlatans are right.Why--even on your _Esope_ review, in which you profess not to be taken inby anything,--I have found unhappy young men persuading themselves thatthey love an art and ideas for which they have not a vestige of love. Theyget drunk on it, without any sort of pleasure, simply because they are toldto do so: and they are dying of boredom--boredom with the monstrous lie ofthe whole thing!"

* * * * *

Christophe passed through these wavering and dispirited creatures like awind shaking the slumbering trees. He made no attempt to force them to hisway of thinking: he breathed into them energy enough to make them think forthemselves. He used to say:

"You are too humble. The grand enemy is neurasthenia, doubt. A man can andmust be tolerant and human. But no man may doubt what he believes to begood and true. A man must believe in what he thinks. And he should maintainwhat he believes. Whatever our powers may be, we have no right to forswearthem. The smallest creature in the world, like the greatest, has his duty.And--(though he is not sufficiently conscious of it)--he has also a power.Why should you think that your revolt will carry so little weight? A sturdyupright conscience which dares assert itself is a mighty thing. More thanonce during the last few years you have seen the State and public opinionforced to reckon with the views of an honest man, who had no other weaponsbut his own moral force, which, with constant courage and tenacity, he haddared publicly to assert....

"And if you must go on asking what's the good of taking so much trouble,what's the good of fighting, _what's the good of it all?_... Then, I willtell you:--Because France is dying, because Europe is perishing--because,if we did not fight, our civilization, the edifice so splendidlyconstructed, at the cost of centuries of labor, by our humanity, wouldcrumble away. These are not idle words. The country is in danger, ourEuropean mother-country,--and more than any, yours, your own nativecountry, France. Your apathy is killing her. Your silence is killing her.Each of your energies as it dies, each of your ideas as it accepts andsurrenders, each of your good intentions as it ends in sterility, everydrop of your blood as it dries up, unused, in your veins, means death toher.... Up! up! You must live! Or, if you must die, then you must diefighting like men!"

* * * * *

But the chief difficulty lay not in getting them to do something, but ingetting them to act together. There they were quite unmanageable. The bestof them were the most obstinate, as Christophe found in dealing with thetenants in his own house: M. Felix Weil, Elsberger, the engineer, andCommandant Chabran, lived on terms of polite and silent hostility. And yet,though Christophe knew very little of them, he could see that, underneaththeir party and racial labels, they all wanted the same thing.

There were many reasons particularly why M. Weil and the Commandant shouldhave understood each other. By one of those contrasts common to thoughtfulmen, M. Weil, who never left his books and lived only in the life of themind, had a passion for all things military. "_We are all cranks_," saidthe half-Jew Montaigne, applying to mankind in general what is perfectlytrue of certain types of minds, like the type of which M. Weil was anexample. The old intellectual had the craze for Napoleon. He collectedbooks and relics which brought to life in him the terrible dream of theImperial epic. Like many Frenchmen of that crepuscular epoch, he wasdazzled by the distant rays of that glorious sun. He used to go through thecampaigns, fight the battles all over again, and discuss operations: hewas one of those chamber-strategists who swarm in the Academies and theUniversities, who explain Austerlitz and declare how Waterloo should havebeen fought. He was the first to make fun of the "Napoleonite" in himself:it tickled his irony: but none the less he went on reading the splendidstories with the wild enthusiasm of a child playing a game: he would weepover certain episodes: and when he realized that he had been weak enough toshed tears, he would roar with laughter, and call himself an old fool. As amatter of fact, he was a Napoleonite not so much from patriotism as froma romantic interest and a platonic love of action. However, he was a goodpatriot, and much more attached to France than many an actual Frenchman.The French anti-Semites are stupid and actively mischievous in castingtheir insulting suspicions on the feeling for France of the Jews who havesettled in the country. Outside the reasons by which any family does ofnecessity, after a generation or two, become attached to the land of itsadoption, where the blood of the soil has become its own, the Jews haveespecial reason to love the nation which in the West stands for the mostadvanced ideas of intellectual and moral liberty. They love it becausefor a hundred years they have helped to make it so, and its liberty is inpart their work. How, then, should they not defend it against every menaceof feudal reaction? To try--as a handful of unscrupulous politicians anda herd of wrong-headed people would like--to break the bonds which bindthese Frenchmen by adoption to France, is to play into the hands of thatreaction.

Commandant Chabran was one of those wrong-headed old Frenchmen who areroused to fury by the newspapers, which make out that every immigrantinto France is a secret enemy, and, in a human, hospitable spirit, forcethemselves to suspect and hate and revile them, and deny the brave destinyof the race, which is the conflux of all the races. Therefore, he thoughtit incumbent on him not to know the tenant of the first floor, although hewould have been glad to have his acquaintance. As for M. Weil, he wouldhave been very glad to talk to the old soldier: but he knew him for anationalist, and regarded him with mild contempt.

Christophe had much less reason than the Commandant for being interested inM. Weil. But he could not bear to hear ill spoken of anybody unjustly. Andhe broke many a lance in defence of M. Weil when he was attacked in hispresence.

One day, when the Commandant, as usual, was railing against the prevailingstate of things, Christophe said to him:

"It is your own fault. You all shut yourselves up inside yourselves. Whenthings in France are not going well, to your way of thinking, you submit toit and send in your resignation. One would think it was a point of honorwith you to admit yourselves beaten. I've never seen anybody lose a causewith such absolute delight. Come, Commandant, you have made war; is thatfighting, or anything like it?"

"It is not a question of fighting," replied the Commandant. "We don't fightagainst France. In such struggles as these we have to argue, and vote, andmix with all sorts of knaves and low blackguards: and I don't like it."

"You seem to be profoundly disgusted! I suppose you had to do with knavesand low blackguards in Africa!"

"On my honor, that did not disgust me nearly so much. Out there one couldalways knock them down! Besides, if it's a question of fighting, you needsoldiers. I had my sharpshooters out there. Here I am all alone."

"It isn't that there is any lack of good men."

"Where are they?"

"Everywhere. All round us."

"Well: what are they doing?"

"Just what you're doing. Nothing. They say there's nothing to be done."

"Give me an instance."

"Three, if you like, in this very house."

Christophe mentioned M. Weil,--(the Commandant gave an exclamation),--andthe Elsbergers,--(he jumped in his seat):

"That Jew? Those Dreyfusards?"

"Dreyfusards?" said Christophe. "Well: what does that matter?"

"It is they who have ruined France."

"They love France as much as you do."

"They're mad, mischievous lunatics."

"Can't you be just to your adversaries?"

"I can get on quite well with loyal adversaries who use the same weapons.The proof of that is that I am here talking to you, Monsieur German. I canthink well of the Germans, although some day I hope to give them back withinterest the thrashing we got from them. But it is not the same thing withour enemies at home: they use underhand weapons, sophistry, and unsoundideas, and a poisonous humanitarianism...."

"Yes. You are in the same state of mind as that of the knights of theMiddle Ages, when, for the first time, they found themselves faced withgunpowder. What do you want? There is evolution in war too."

"So be it. But then, let us be frank, and say that war is war."

"Suppose a common enemy were to threaten Europe, wouldn't you throw in yourlot with the Germans?"

"We did so, in China."

"Very well, then: look about you. Don't you see that the heroic idealismof your country and every other country in Europe is actually threatened?Don't you see that they are all, more or less, a prey to the adventurers ofevery class of society? To fight that common enemy, don't you think youshould join with those of your adversaries who are of some worth and moralvigor? How can a man like you set so little store by the realities of life?Here are people who uphold an ideal which is different from your own! Anideal is a force, you cannot deny it: in the struggle in which you wererecently engaged, it was your adversaries' ideal which defeated you.Instead of wasting your strength in fighting against it, why not make useof it, side by side with your own, against the enemies of all ideals, themen who are exploiting your country and your wealth of ideas, the men whoare bringing European civilization to rottenness?"

"For whose sake? One must know where one is. To make our adversariestriumph?"

"When you were in Africa, you never stopped to think whether you werefighting for the King or the Republic. I fancy that not many of you evergave a thought to the Republic."

"They didn't care a rap."

"Good! And that was well for France. You conquered for her, as well as foryourselves, and for the honor and the joy of it. Why not do the same here?Why not widen the scope of the fight? Don't go haggling over differences inpolitics and religion. These things are utterly futile. What does it matterwhether your nation is the eldest daughter of the Church or the eldestdaughter of Reason? The only thing that does matter is that it shouldlive! Everything that exalts life is good. There is only one enemy,pleasure-seeking egoism, which fouls the sources of life and dries them up.Exalt force, exalt the light, exalt fruitful love, the joy of sacrifice,action, and give up expecting other people to act for you. Do, act,combine! Come!..."

And he laughed and began to bang out the first bars of the march in _Bminor_ from the _Choral Symphony_.

"Do you know," he said, breaking off, "that if I were one of yourmusicians, say Charpentier or Bruneau (devil take the two of them!),I would combine in a choral symphony _Aux armes, citoyens!_,_l'Internationale_, _Vive Henri IV_, and _Dieu Protege la France!_,--(Yousee, something like this.)--I would make you a soup so hot that it wouldburn your mouth! It would be unpleasant,--(no worse in any case than whatyou are doing now):--but I vow it would warm your vitals, and that youwould have to set out on the march!"

And he roared with laughter.

The Commandant laughed too:

"You're a fine fellow, Monsieur Krafft. What a pity you're not one of us!"

"But I am one of you! The fight is the same everywhere. Let us close up theranks!"

The Commandant quite agreed: but there he stayed. Then Christophe pressedhis point and brought the conversation back to M. Weil and the Elsbergers.And the old soldier no less obstinately went back to his eternal argumentsagainst Jews and Dreyfusards, and nothing that Christophe had said seemedto have had the slightest effect on him.

Christophe grew despondent. Olivier said to him:

"Don't you worry about it. One man cannot all of a sudden change the wholestate of mind of a nation. That's too much to expect! But you have done agood deal without knowing it."

"What have I done?" said Christophe.

"You are Christophe."

"What good is that to other people?"

"A great deal. Just go on being what you are, my dear Christophe. Don't youworry about us."

But Christophe could not surrender. He went on arguing with CommandantChabran, sometimes with great vehemence. It amused Celine. She wasgenerally present at their discussions, sitting and working in silence. Shetook no part in the argument: but it seemed to make her more lively: andquite a different expression would come into her eyes: it was as though itgave her more breathing-space. She began to read, and went out a littlemore, and found more things to interest her. And one day, when Christophewas battling with her father about the Elsbergers, the Commandant saw hersmile: he asked her what she was thinking, and she replied calmly:

"I think M. Krafft is right."

The Commandant was taken aback, and said:

"You ... you surprise me!... However, right or wrong, we are what we are.And there's no reason why we should know these people. Isn't it so, mydear?"

"No, father," she replied. "I would like to know them."

The Commandant said nothing, and pretended that he had not heard. Hehimself was much less insensible of Christophe's influence than he cared toappear. His vehemence and narrow-mindedness did not prevent his having aproper sense of justice and very generous feelings. He loved Christophe, heloved his frankness and his moral soundness, and he used often bitterly toregret that Christophe was a German. Although he always lost his temper inthese discussions, he was always eager for more, and Christophe's argumentsdid produce an effect on him though he would never have been willing toadmit it. But one day Christophe found him absorbed in reading a book whichhe would not let him see. And when Celine took Christophe to the door andfound herself alone with him, she said:

"Do you know what he was reading? One of M. Weil's books."

Christophe was delighted.

"What does he say about it?"

"He says: 'Beast!'... But he can't put it down."

Christophe made no allusion to the fact with the Commandant. It was he whoasked:

Olivier was right. It is not through words that a man can influence othermen: but through his life. There are people who irradiate an atmosphereof peace from their eyes, and in their gestures, and through the silentcontact with the serenity of their souls. Christophe irradiated life.Softly, softly, like the moist air of spring, it penetrated the walls andthe closed windows of the somnolent old house: it gave new life to thehearts of men and women, whom sorrow, weakness, and isolation had for yearsbeen consuming, so that they were withered and like dead creatures. Whata power there is in one soul over another! Those who wield that power andthose who feel it are alike ignorant of its working. And yet the life ofthe world is in the ebb and flow controlled by that mysterious power ofattraction.

On the second floor, below Christophe and Olivier's room, there lived,as we have seen, a young woman of thirty-five, a Madame Germain, a widowof two years' standing, who, the year before, had lost her little girl,a child of seven. She lived with her mother-in-law, and they never sawanybody. Of all the tenants of the house, they had the least to do withChristophe. They had hardly met, and they had never spoken to each other.

She was a tall woman, thin, but with a good figure; she had fine browneyes, dull and rather inexpressive, though every now and then there glowedin them a hard, mournful light. Her face was sallow and her complexionwaxy: her cheeks were hollow and her lips were tightly compressed. Theelder Madame Germain was a devout lady, and spent all her time at church.The younger woman lived in jealous isolation in her grief. She took nointerest in anything or anybody. She surrounded herself with portraits andpictures of her little girl, and by dint of staring at them she had ceasedto see her as she was: the photographs and dead presentments had killed theliving image of the child. She had ceased to see her as she was, but sheclung to it: she was determined to think of nothing but the child: and so,in the end, she reached a point at which she could not even think of her:she had completed the work of death. There she stopped, frozen, with herheart turned to stone, with no tears to shed, with her life withered.Religion was no aid to her. She went through the formalities, but her heartwas not in them, and therefore she had no living faith: she gave money forMasses, but she took no active part in any of the work of the Church: herwhole religion was centered in the one thought of seeing her child again.What did the rest matter? God? What had she to do with God? To see herchild again, only to see her again.... And she was by no means sure thatshe would do so. She wished to believe it, willed it hardly, desperately:but she was in doubt.... She could not bear to see other children, and usedto think:

"Why are they not dead too?"

In the neighborhood there was a little girl who in figure and manner waslike her own. When she saw her from behind, with her little pigtails downher back, she used to tremble. She would follow her, and, when the childturned round and she saw that it was not _she_, she would long to strangleher. She used to complain that the Elsberger children made a noisebelow her, though they were very quiet, and even very subdued by theirup-bringing: and when the unhappy children began to play about theirroom, she would send her maid to ask her neighbors to make them be quiet.Christophe met her once as he was coming in with the little girls, and washurt and horrified by the hard way in which she looked at them.

One summer evening when the poor woman was sitting in the dark in theself-hypnotized condition of the utter emptiness of her living death, sheheard Christophe playing. It was his habit to sit at the piano in thehalf-light, musing and improvising. His music irritated her, for itdisturbed the empty torpor into which she had sunk. She shut the windowangrily. The music penetrated through to her room. Madame Germain wasfilled with a sort of hatred for it. She would have been glad to stopChristophe, but she had no right to do so. Thereafter, every day at thesame time she sat waiting impatiently and irritably for the music to begin:and when it was later than usual her irritation was only the more acute. Inspite of herself, she had to follow the music through to the end, and whenit was over she found it hard to sink back into her usual apathy.--And oneevening, when she was curled up in a corner of her dark room, and, throughthe walls and the closed window, the distant music reached her, thatlight-giving music ... she felt a thrill run through her, and once moretears came to her eyes. She went and opened the window, and stood therelistening and weeping. The music was like rain drop by drop falling uponher poor withered heart, and giving it new life. Once more she could seethe sky, the stars, the summer night: within herself she felt the dawningof a new interest in life, as yet only a poor, pale light, vague andsorrowful sympathy for others. And that night, for the first time for manymonths, the image of her little girl came to her in her dreams.--For thesurest road to bring us near the beloved dead, the best means of seeingthem again, is not to go with them into death, but to live. They live inour lives, and die with us.

She made no attempt to meet Christophe. Bather she avoided him. But sheused to hear him go by on the stairs with the children: and she would standin hiding behind her door to listen to their babyish prattle, which somoved her heart.

One day, as she was going out, she heard their little padding footstepscoming down the stairs, rather more noisily than usual, and the voice ofone of the children saying to her sister:

"Don't make so much noise, Lucette. Christophe says you mustn't because ofthe sorrowful lady."

And the other child began to walk more quietly and to talk in a whisper.Then Madame Germain could not restrain herself: she opened the door, andtook the children in her arms, and hugged them fiercely. They were afraid:one of the children began to cry. She let them go, and went back into herown room.

After that, whenever she met them, she used to try to smile at them, a poorwithered smile,--(for she had grown unused to smiling);--she would speak tothem awkwardly and affectionately, and the children would reply shyly intimid, bashful whispers. They were still afraid of the sorrowful lady, moreafraid than ever: and now, whenever they passed the door, they used to runlest she should come out and catch them. She used to hide to catch sightof them as they passed. She would have been ashamed to be seen talking tothe children. She was ashamed in her own eyes. It seemed to her that shewas robbing her own dead child of some of the love to which she only wasentitled. She would kneel down and pray for her forgiveness. But now thatthe instinct for life and love was newly awakened in her, she could notresist it: it was stronger than herself.

One evening, as Christophe came in, he saw that there was an unusualcommotion in the house. He met a tradesman, who told him that the tenantof the third floor, M. Watelet, had just died suddenly of angina pectoris.Christophe was filled with pity, not so much for his unhappy neighbor asfor the child who was left alone in the world. M. Watelet was not known tohave any relations, and there was every reason to believe that he had leftthe girl almost entirely unprovided for. Christophe raced upstairs, andwent into the flat on the third floor, the door of which was open. Hefound the Abbe Corneille with the body, and the child in tears, cryingto her father: the housekeeper was making clumsy efforts to console her.Christophe took the child in his arms and spoke to her tenderly. She clungto him desperately: he could not think of leaving her: he wanted to takeher away, but she would not let him. He stayed with her. He sat near thewindow in the dying light of day, and went on rocking her in his arms andspeaking to her softly. The child gradually grew calmer, and went to sleep,still sobbing. Christophe laid her on her bed, and tried awkwardly toundress her and undo the laces of her little shoes. It was nightfall. Thedoor of the flat had been left open. A shadow entered with a rustling ofskirts. In the fading light Christophe recognized the fevered eyes of thesorrowful lady. He was amazed. She stood by the door, and said thickly:

"I came.... Will you ... will you let me take her?"

Christophe took her hand and pressed it. Madame Germain was in tears. Thenshe sat by the bedside. And, a moment later, she said:

"Let me stay with her...."

Christophe went up to his own room with the Abbe Corneille. The priest wasa little embarrassed, and begged Ms pardon for coming up. He hoped, hesaid, humbly, that the dead man would have nothing to reproach him with: hehad gone, not as a priest, but as a friend. Christophe was too much movedto speak, and left him with an affectionate shake of the hand.

Next morning, when Christophe went down, he found the child with her armsround Madame Germain's neck, with the naive confidence which makes childrensurrender absolutely to those who have won their affection. She was glad togo with her new friend.... Alas! she had soon forgotten her adopted father.She showed just the same affection for her new mother. That was not verycomforting. Did Madame Germain, in the egoism of her love, see it?...Perhaps. But what did it matter? The thing is to love. That way lieshappiness....

A few weeks after the funeral Madame Germain took the child into thecountry, far away from Paris. Christophe and Olivier saw them off. Thewoman had an expression of contentment and secret joy which they had neverknown in her before. She paid no attention to them. However, just as theywere going, she noticed Christophe, and held out her hand, and said:

"It was you who saved me."

"What's the matter with the woman?" asked Christophe in amazement, as theywere going upstairs after her departure.

A few days later the post brought him a photograph of a little girl whom hedid not know, sitting on a stool, with her little hands sagely folded inher lap, while she looked up at him with clear, sad eyes. Beneath it werewritten these words:

"With thanks from my dear, dead child."

* * * * *

Thus it was that the breath of life passed into all these people. In theattic on the fifth floor was a great and mighty flame of humanity, thewarmth and light of which were slowly filtered through the house.

But Christophe saw it not. To him the process was very slow.

"Ah!" he would sigh, "if one could only bring these good people together,all these people of all classes and every kind of belief, who refuse toknow each other! Can't it be done?"

"What do you want?" said Olivier. "You would need to have mutual toleranceand a power of sympathy which can only come from inward joy,--the joy of ahealthy, normal, harmonious existence,--the joy of having a useful outletfor one's activity, of feeling that one's efforts are not wasted, and thatone is serving some great purpose. You would need to have a prosperouscountry, a nation at the height of greatness, or--(better still)--on theroad to greatness. And you must also have--(the two things go together)--apower which could employ all the nation's energies, an intelligent andstrong power, which would be above party. Now, there is no power aboveparty save that which finds its strength in itself--not in the multitude,that power which seeks not the support of anarchical majorities,--as itdoes nowadays when it is no more than a well-trained dog in the handsof second-rate men, and bends all to its will by service rendered: thevictorious general, the dictatorship of Public Safety, the supremacy of theintelligence... what you will. It does not depend on us. You must have theopportunity and the men capable of seizing it: you must have happiness andgenius. Let us wait and hope! The forces are there: the forces of faith,knowledge, work, old France and new France, and the greater France.... Whatan upheaval it would be, if the word were spoken, the magic word whichshould let loose these forces all together! Of course, neither you nor Ican say the word. Who will say it? Victory? Glory?... Patience! The chiefthing is for the strength of the nation to be gathered together, and notto rust away, and not to lose heart before the time comes. Happiness andgenius only come to those peoples who have earned them by ages of stoicpatience, and labor, and faith."

"Who knows?" said Christophe. "They often come sooner than we think--justwhen we expect them least. You are counting too much on the work of ages.Make ready. Gird your loins. Always be prepared with your shoes on yourfeet and your staff in your hand.... For you do not know that the Lord willnot pass your doors this very night."

* * * * *

The Lord came very near that night. His shadow fell upon the threshold ofthe house.

* * * * *

Following on a sequence of apparently insignificant events, relationsbetween France and Germany suddenly became strained: and, in a few days,the usual neighborly attitude of banal courtesy passed into the provocativemood which precedes war. There was nothing surprising in this, except tothose who were living under the illusion that the world is governed byreason. But there were many such in France: and numbers of people wereamazed from day to day to see the vehement Gallophobia of the GermanPress becoming rampant with the usual quasi-unanimity. Certain of thosenewspapers which, in the two countries, arrogate to themselves a monopolyof patriotism, and speak in the nation's name, and dictate to the State,sometimes with the secret complicity of the State, the policy it shouldfollow, launched forth insulting ultimatums to France. There was a disputebetween Germany and England; and Germany did not admit the right of Francenot to interfere: the insolent newspapers called upon her to declare forGermany, or else threatened to make her pay the chief expenses of the war:they presumed that they could wrest alliance from her fears, and alreadyregarded her as a conquered and contented vassal,--to be frank, likeAustria. It only showed the insane vanity of German Imperialism, drunk withvictory, and the absolute incapacity of German statesmen to understandother races, so that they were always applying the simple common measurewhich was law for themselves: Force, the supreme reason. Naturally, such abrutal demand, made of an ancient nation, rich in its past ages of a gloryand a supremacy in Europe, such as Germany had never known, had had exactlythe opposite effect to that which Germany expected. It had provoked theirslumbering pride; France was shaken from top to base; and even the mostdiffident of the French roared with anger.

The great mass of the German people had nothing at all to do with theprovocation: they were shocked by it: the honest men of every countryask only to be allowed to live in peace: and the people of Germany areparticularly peaceful, affectionate, anxious to be on good terms witheverybody, and much more inclined to admire and emulate other nations thanto go to war with them. But the honest men of a nation are not asked fortheir opinion: and they are not bold enough to give it. Those who are notvirile enough to take public action are inevitably condemned to be itspawns. They are the magnificent and unthinking echo which casts back thesnarling cries of the Press and the defiance of their leaders, and swellsthem into the _Marseillaise_, or the _Wacht am Rhein_.

It was a terrible blow to Christophe and Olivier. They were so used toliving in mutual love that they could not understand why their countriesdid not do the same. Neither of them could grasp the reasons for thepersistent hostility, which was now so suddenly brought to the surface,especially Christophe, who, being a German, had no sort of ground forill-feeling against the people whom his own people had conquered.Although he himself was shocked by the intolerable vanity of some of hisfellow-countrymen, and, up to a certain point, was entirely with the Frenchagainst such a high-handed Brunswicker demand, he could not understandwhy France should, after all, be unwilling to enter into an alliance withGermany. The two countries seemed to him to have so many deep-seatedreasons for being united, so many ideas in common, and such great tasks toaccomplish together, that it annoyed him to see them persisting in theirwasteful, sterile ill-feeling. Like all Germans, he regarded France as themost to blame for the misunderstanding: for, though he was quite ready toadmit that it was painful for her to sit still under the memory of herdefeat, yet that was, after all, only a matter of vanity, which should beset aside in the higher interests of civilization and of France herself.He had never taken the trouble to think out the problem of Alsace andLorraine. At school he had been taught to regard the annexation of thosecountries as an act of justice, by which, after centuries of foreignsubjection, a German province had been restored to the German flag. And so,he was brought down with a run, and he discovered that his friend regardedthe annexation as a crime. He had never even spoken to him about thesethings, so convinced was he that they were of the same opinion: and now hefound Olivier, of whose good faith and broad-mindedness he was certain,telling him, dispassionately, without anger and with profound sadness, thatit was possible for a great people to renounce the thought of vengeance forsuch a crime, but quite impossible for them to subscribe to it withoutdishonor.

They had great difficulty in understanding each other. Olivier's historicalargument, alleging the right of France to claim Alsace as a Latin country,made no impression on Christophe: there were just as good arguments to thecontrary: history can provide politics with every sort of argument in everysort of cause. Christophe was much more accessible to the human, and notonly French, aspect of the problem. Whether the Alsatians were or were notGermans was not the question. They did not wish to be Germans: and thatwas all that mattered. What nation has the right to say: "These people aremine: for they are my brothers"? If the brothers in question renounce thatnation, though they be a thousand times in the wrong, the consequences ofthe breach must always be borne by the party who has failed to win thelove of the other, and therefore has lost the right to presume to bind theother's fortunes up with his own. After forty years of strained relations,vexations, patent or disguised, and even of real advantage gained from theexact and intelligent administration of Germany, the Alsatians persist intheir refusal to become Germans: and, though they might give in from sheerexhaustion, nothing could ever wipe out the memory of the sufferings of thegenerations, forced to live in exile from their native land, or, what iseven more pitiful, unable to leave it, and compelled to bend under a yokewhich was hateful to them, and to submit to the seizure of their countryand the slavery of their people.

Christophe naively confessed that he had never seen the matter in thatlight: and he was considerably perturbed by it. And honest Germans alwaysbring to a discussion an integrity which does not always go with thepassionate self-esteem of a Latin, however sincere he may be. It neveroccurred to Christophe to support his argument by the citation of similarcrimes perpetrated by all nations all through the history of the world. Hewas too proud to fall back upon any such humiliating excuse: he knew that,as humanity advances, its crimes become more odious, for they stand in aclearer light. But he knew also that if France were victorious in her turnshe would be no more moderate in the hour of victory than Germany had been,and that yet another link would be added to the chain of the crimes of thenations. So the tragic conflict would drag on for ever, in which the bestelements of European civilization were in danger of being lost.

Though the subject was terribly painful for Christophe, it was even more sofor Olivier. It meant for him, not only the sorrow of a great fratricidalstruggle between the two nations best fitted for alliance together. InFrance the nation was divided, and one faction was preparing to fight theother. For years pacific and anti-militarist doctrines had been spread andpropagated both by the noblest and the vilest elements of the nation. TheGovernment had for a long time held aloof, with the weak-kneed dilettantismwith which it handled everything which did not concern the immediateinterests of the politicians: and it never occurred to it that it mightbe less dangerous frankly to maintain the most dangerous doctrines thanto leave them free to creep into the veins of the people and ruin theircapacity for war, while armaments were being prepared. These doctrinesappealed to the Free Thinkers who were dreaming of founding a Europeanbrotherhood, working all together to make the world more just and human.They appealed also to the selfish cowardice of the rabble, who wereunwilling to endanger their skins for anything or anybody.--These ideas hadbeen taken up by Olivier and many of his friends. Once or twice, in hisrooms, Christophe had been present at discussions which had amazed him. Hisfriend Mooch, who was stuffed full of humanitarian illusions, used to say,with eyes blazing, quite calmly, that war must be abolished, and that thebest way of setting about it was to incite the soldiers to mutiny, and, ifnecessary, to shoot down their leaders: and he would insist that it wasbound to succeed. Elie Elsberger would reply, coldly and vehemently, that,if war were to break out, he and his friends would not set out for thefrontier before they had settled their account with the enemy at home.Andre Elsberger would take Mooch's part.... One day Christophe came in fora terrible scene between the two brothers. They threatened to shoot eachother. Although their bloodthirsty words were spoken in a bantering tone,he had a feeling that neither of them had uttered a single threat which hewas not prepared to put into action. Christophe was amazed when he thoughtof a race of men so absurd as to be always ready to commit suicide for thesake of ideas.... Madmen. Crazy logicians. And yet they are good men. Eachman sees only his own ideas, and wishes to follow them through to the end,without turning aside by a hair's breadth. And it is all quite useless: forthey crush each other out of existence. The humanitarians wage war on thepatriots. The patriots wage war on the humanitarians. And meanwhile theenemy comes and destroys both country and humanity in one swoop.

"But tell me," Christophe would ask Andre Elsberger, "are you in touch withthe proletarians of the rest of the nations?"

"Some one has to begin. And we are the people to do it. We have always beenthe first. It is for us to give the signal!"

"And suppose the others won't follow!"

"They will."

"Have you made treaties, and drawn up a plan?"

"What's the good of treaties? Our force is superior to diplomacy."

"It is not a question of ideas: it's a question of strategy. If you aregoing to destroy war, you must borrow the methods of war. Draw up your planof campaign in the two countries. Arrange that on such and such a date inFrance and Germany your allied troops shall take such and such a step. But,if you go to work without a plan, how can you expect any good to come ofit? With chance on the one hand, and tremendous organized forces on theother--the result would never be in doubt: you would be crushed out ofexistence."

Andre Elsberger did not listen. He shrugged his shoulders and took refugein vague threats: a handful of sand, he said, was enough to smash the wholemachine, if it were dropped into the right place in the gears.

But it is one thing to discuss at leisure, theoretically, and quite anotherto have to put one's ideas into practice, especially when one has to makeup one's mind quickly.... Those are frightful moments when the great tidesurges through the depths of the hearts of men! They thought they were freeand masters of their thoughts! But now, in spite of themselves, they areconscious of being dragged onwards, onwards.... An obscure power of will isset against their will. Then they discover that it is not they who existin reality, not they, but that unknown Force, whose laws govern the wholeocean of humanity....

Men of the firmest intelligence, men the most secure in their faith, nowsaw it dissolve at the first puff of reality, and stood turning this wayand that, not daring to make up their minds, and often, to their immensesurprise, deciding upon a course of action entirely different from anythat they had foreseen. Some of the most eager to abolish war suddenlyfelt a vigorous passionate pride in their country leap into being in theirhearts. Christophe found Socialists, and even revolutionary syndicalists,absolutely bowled over by their passionate pride in a duty utterly foreignto their temper. At the very beginning of the upheaval, when as yethe hardly believed that the affair could be serious, he said to AndreElsberger, with his usual German want of tact, that now was the moment toapply his theories, unless he wanted Germany to take France. Andre fumed,and replied angrily:

"Just you try!... Swine, you haven't even guts enough to muzzle yourEmperor and shake off the yoke, in spite of your thrice-blessed SocialistParty, with its four hundred thousand members and its three millionelectors. We'll do it for you! Take us? We'll take you...."

And as they were held on and on in suspense, they grew restless andfeverish. Andre was in torment. He knew that his faith was true, and yethe could not defend it! He felt that he was infected by the moral epidemicwhich spreads among the people of a nation the collective insanity of theirideas, the terrible spirit of war! It attacked everybody about Christophe,and even Christophe himself. They were no longer on speaking terms, andkept themselves to themselves.

But it was impossible to endure such suspense for long. The wind of actionwilly-nilly sifted the waverers into one group or another. And one day,when it seemed that they must be on the eve of the ultimatum,--when, inboth countries, the springs of action were taut, ready for slaughter,Christophe saw that everybody, including the people in his own house, hadmade up their minds. Every kind of party was instinctively rallied roundthe detested or despised Government which represented France. Not onlythe honest men of the various parties: but the esthetes, the masters ofdepraved art, took to interpolating professions of patriotic faith in theirwork. The Jews were talking of defending the soil of their ancestors. Atthe mere mention of the flag tears came to Hamilton's eyes. And they wereall sincere: they were all victims of the contagion. Andre Elsberger andhis syndicalist friends, just as much as the rest, and even more: for,being crushed by necessity and pledged to a party that they detested, theysubmitted with a grim fury and a stormy pessimism which made them crazy foraction. Aubert, the artisan, torn between his cultivated humanitarianismand his instinctive chauvinism, was almost beside himself. After manysleepless nights he had at last found a formula which could accommodateeverything: that France was synonymous with Humanity. Thereafter he neverspoke to Christophe. Almost all the people in the house had closed theirdoors to him. Even the good Arnauds never invited him. They went on playingmusic and surrounding themselves with art; they tried to forget the generalobsession. But they could not help thinking of it. When either of themalone happened to meet Christophe alone, he or she would shake handswarmly, but hurriedly and furtively. And if, the very same day, Christophemet them together, they would pass him by with a frigid bow. On theother hand, people who had not spoken to each other for years now rushedtogether. One evening Olivier beckoned to Christophe to go near the window,and, without a word, he pointed to the Elsbergers talking to CommandantChabran in the garden below.

Christophe had no time to be surprised at such a revolution in the minds ofhis friends. He was too much occupied with his own mind, in which there hadbeen an upheaval, the consequences of which he could not master. Olivierwas much calmer than he, though he had much more reason to be upset. Ofall Christophe's acquaintance, he seemed to be the only one to escape thecontagion. Though he was oppressed by the anxious waiting for the outbreakof war, and the dread of schism at home, which he saw must happen in spiteof everything, he knew the greatness of the two hostile faiths which sooneror later would come to grips: he knew also that it is the part of France tobe the experimental ground in human progress, and that all new ideas needto be watered with her blood before they can come to flower. For his ownpart, he refused to take part in the skirmish. While the civilized nationswere cutting each other's throats he was fain to repeat the device ofAntigone: "_I am made for love, and not for hate_."--For love and forunderstanding, which is another form of love. His fondness for Christophewas enough to make his duty plain to him. At a time when millions of humanbeings were on the brink of hatred, he felt that the duty and happiness offriends like himself and Christophe was to love each other, and to keeptheir reason uncontaminated by the general upheaval. He remembered howGoethe had refused to associate himself with the liberation movement of1813, when hatred sent Germany to march out against France.

Christophe felt the same: and yet he was not easy in his mind. He who in away had deserted Germany, and could not return thither, he who had been fedwith the European ideas of the great Germans of the eighteenth century, sodear to his old friend Schulz, and detested the militarist and commercialspirit of New Germany, now found himself the prey of gusty passions: and hedid not know whither they would lead him. He did not tell Olivier, but hespent his days in agony, longing for news. Secretly he put his affairs inorder and packed his trunk. He did not reason the thing out. It was toostrong for him. Olivier watched him anxiously, and guessed the strugglewhich was going on in his friend's mind: and he dared not question him.They felt that they were impelled to draw closer to each other than ever,and they loved each other more: but they were afraid to speak: theytrembled lest they should discover some difference of thought which mightcome between them and divide them, as their old misunderstanding had done.Often their eyes would meet with an expression of tender anxiety, asthough they were on the eve of parting for ever. And they were silent andoppressed.

* * * * *

But still on the roof of the house that was being built on the other sideof the yard, all through those days of gloom, with the rain beating down onthem, the workmen were putting the finishing touches: and Christophe'sfriend, the loquacious slater, laughed and shouted across:

"There! The house is finished!"

* * * * *

Happily, the storm passed as quickly as it had come. The chancelleriespublished bulletins announcing the return of fair weather, barometricallyas it were. The howling dogs of the Press were despatched to their kennels.In a few hours the tension was relieved. It was a summer evening, andChristophe had rushed in breathless to convey the good news to Olivier. Hewas happy, and could breathe again. Olivier looked at him with a little sadsmile. And he dared not ask him the question that lay next his heart. Hesaid:

"Well: you have seen them all united, all these people who could notunderstand each other."

"Yes," said Christophe good-humoredly, "I have seen them united. You'resuch humbugs! You all cry out upon each other, but at bottom you're all ofthe same mind."

"You seem to be glad of it," remarked Olivier.

"Why not? Because they were united at my expense?... Bah! I'm strong enoughfor that ... Besides, it's a fine thing to feel the mighty torrent rushingyou along, and the demons that were let loose in your hearts...."

"They terrify me," said Olivier. "I would rather have eternal solitude thanhave my people united at such a cost."

They relapsed into silence: and neither of them dared approach the subjectwhich was troubling them. At last Olivier pulled himself together, and, ina choking voice, said:

"Tell me frankly, Christophe: you were going away?"

Christophe replied:

"Yes."

Olivier was sure that he would say it. And yet his heart ached for it. Hesaid:

"Tell me, Christophe: could you ... could you ...?"

Christophe drew his hand over his forehead and said:

"Don't let's talk of it. I don't like to think of it."

Olivier went on sorrowfully:

"You would have fought against us?"

"I don't know. I never thought about it."

"But, in your heart, you had decided?"

Christophe said:

"Yes."

"Against me?"

"Never against you. You are mine. Where I am, you are too."

"But against my country?"

"For my country."

"It is a terrible thing," said Olivier. "I love my country, as you do. Ilove France: but could I slay my soul for her? Could I betray my consciencefor her? That would be to betray her. How could I hate, having no hatred,or, without being guilty of a lie, assume a hatred that I did not feel? Themodern State was guilty of a monstrous crime--a crime which will prove itsundoing--when it presumed to impose its brazen laws on the free Church ofthose spirits the very essence of whose being is to love and understand.Let Caesar be Caesar, but let him not assume the Godhead! Let him take ourmoney and our lives: over our souls he has no rights: he shall not stainthem with blood. We are in this world to give it light, not to darken it:let each man fulfil his duty! If Caesar desires war, then let Caesar havearmies for that purpose, armies as they were in olden times, armies ofmen whose trade is war! I am not so foolish as to waste my time in vainlymoaning and groaning in protest against force. But I am not a soldier inthe army of force. I am a soldier in the army of the spirit: with thousandsof other men who are my brothers-in-arms I represent France in that army.Let Caesar conquer the world if he will! We march to the conquest of truth."

"To conquer," said Christophe, "you must vanquish, you must live. Truth isno hard dogma, secreted by the brain, like a stalactite by the walls ofa cave. Truth is life. It is not to be found in your own head, but to besought for in the hearts of others. Attach yourself to them, be one withthem. Think as much as you like, but do you every day take a bath ofhumanity. You must live in the life of others and love and bow to destiny."

"It is our fate to be what we are. It does not depend on us whether weshall or shall not think certain things, even though they be dangerous. Wehave reached such a pitch of civilization that we cannot turn back."

"Yes, you have reached the farthest limit of the plateau of civilization,that dizzy height to which no nation can climb without feeling anirresistible desire to fling itself down. Religion and instinct areweakened in you. You have nothing left but intelligence. You are machinesgrinding out philosophy. Death comes rushing in upon you."

"Death comes to every nation: it is a matter of centuries."

"Have done with your centuries! The whole of life is a matter of days andhours. If you weren't such an infernally metaphysical lot, you'd nevergo shuffling over into the absolute, instead of seizing and holding thepassing moment."

"What do you want? The flame burns the torch away. You can't both live andhave lived, my dear Christophe."

"You must live."

"It is a great thing to have been great."

"It is only a great thing when there are still men who are alive enough andgreat enough to appreciate it."

"Wouldn't you much rather have been the Greeks, who are dead, than any ofthe people who are vegetating nowadays?"

"I'd much rather be myself, Christophe, and very much alive."

Olivier gave up the argument. It was not that he was without an answer.But it did not interest him. All through the discussion he had only beenthinking of Christophe. He said, with a sigh:

"You love me less than I love you."

Christophe took his hand and pressed it tenderly:

"Dear Olivier," he said, "I love you more than my life. But you mustforgive me if I do not love you more than Life, the sun of our two races. Ihave a horror of the night into which your false progress drags me. Allyour sentiments of renunciation are only the covering of the same BuddhistNirvana. Only action is living, even when it brings death. In this worldwe can only choose between the devouring flame and night. In spite of thesad sweetness of dreams in the hour of twilight, I have no desire for thatpeace which is the forerunner of death. The silence of infinite spaceterrifies me. Heap more fagots upon the fire! More! And yet more! Myselftoo, if needs must. I will not let the fire dwindle. If it dies down, thereis an end of us, an end of everything."

"What you say is old," said Olivier; "it comes from the depths of thebarbarous past."

He took down from his shelves a book of Hindoo poetry, and read the sublimeapostrophe of the God Krishna:

"_Arise, and fight with a resolute heart. Setting no store by pleasure orpain, or gain or loss, or victory or defeat, fight with all thy might...._"

Christophe snatched the book from his hands and read:

"_... I have nothing in the world to bid me toil: there is nothing that isnot mine: and yet I cease not from my labor. If I did not act, without atruce and without relief, setting an example for men to follow, all menwould perish. If for a moment I were to cease from my labors, I shouldplunge the world in chaos, and I should he the destroyer of life._"

"Life," repeated Olivier,--"what is life?"

"A tragedy," said Christophe. "Hurrah!"

* * * * *

The panic died down. Every one hastened to forget, with a hidden fear intheir hearts. No one seemed to remember what had happened. And yet it wasplain that it was still in their thoughts, from the joy with which theyresumed their lives, the pleasant life from day to day, which is nevertruly valued until it is endangered. As usual when danger is past, theygulped it down with renewed avidity.

Christophe flung himself into creative work with tenfold vigor. He draggedOlivier after him. In reaction against their recent gloomy thoughts theyhad begun to collaborate in a Rabelaisian epic. It was colored by thatbroad materialism which follows on periods of moral stress. To thelegendary heroes--Gargantua, Friar John, Panurge--Olivier had added, onChristophe's inspiration, a new character, a peasant, Jacques Patience,simple, cunning, sly, resigned, who was the butt of the others, putting upwith it when he was thrashed and robbed,--putting up with it when they madelove to his wife, and laid waste his fields,--tirelessly putting his housein order and cultivating his land,--forced to follow the others to war,bearing the burden of the baggage, coming in for all the kicks, and stillputting up with it,--waiting, laughing at the exploits of his masters andthe thrashings they gave him, and saying, "They can't go on for ever,"foreseeing their ultimate downfall, looking out for it out of the corner ofhis eye, and silently laughing at the thought of it, with his great mouthagape. One fine day it turned out that Gargantua and Friar John weredrowned while they were away on a crusade. Patience honestly regrettedtheir loss, merrily took heart of grace, saved Panurge, who was drowningalso, and said:

"I know that you will go on playing your tricks on me: you don't take mein: but I can't do without you: you drive away the spleen, and make melaugh."

Christophe set the poem to music with great symphonic pictures, with soliand chorus, mock-heroic battles, riotous country fairs, vocal buffooneries,madrigals a la Jannequin, with tremendous childlike glee, a storm at sea,the Island of Bells, and, finally, a pastoral symphony, full of the airof the fields, and the blithe serenity of the flutes and oboes, and theclean-souled folk-songs of Old France.--The friends worked away withboundless delight. The weakly Olivier, with his pale cheeks, found newhealth in Christophe's health. Gusts of wind blew through their garret. Thevery intoxication of Joy! To be working together, heart to heart with one'sfriend! The embrace of two lovers is not sweeter or more ardent than sucha yoking together of two kindred souls. They were so near in sympathythat often the same ideas would flash upon them at the same moment. OrChristophe would write the music for a scene for which Olivier wouldimmediately find words. Christophe impetuously dragged Olivier along in hiswake. His mind swamped that of his friend, and made it fruitful.

The joy of creation was enhanced by that of success. Hecht had just made uphis mind to publish the _David_: and the score, well launched, had had aninstantaneous success abroad. A great Wagnerian _Kapellmeister_, a friendof Hecht's, who had settled in England, was enthusiastic about it: he hadgiven it at several of his concerts with considerable success, which,with the _Kapellmeister's_ enthusiasm, had carried it over to Germany,where also the _David_ had been played. The _Kapellmeister_ had enteredinto correspondence with Christophe, and had asked him for more of hiscompositions, offered to do anything he could to help him, and was engagedin ardent propaganda in his cause. In Germany, the _Iphigenia_, whichhad originally been hissed, was unearthed, and it was hailed as a workof genius. Certain facts in Christophe's life, being of a romanticnature, contributed not a little to the spurring of public interest. The_Frankfurter Zeitung_ was the first to publish an enthusiastic article.Others followed. Then, in France, a few people began to be aware that theyhad a great musician in their midst. One of the Parisian conductors askedChristophe for his Rabelaisian epic before it was finished: and Goujart,perceiving his approaching fame, began to speak mysteriously of a friendof his who was a genius, and had been discovered by himself. He wrote alaudatory article about the admirable _David_,--entirely forgetting thatonly the year before he had decried it in a short notice of a few lines.Nobody else remembered it either or seemed to be in the least astonishedat his sudden change. There are so many people in Paris who are now loudin their praises of Wagner and Cesar Franck, where formerly they roundlyabused them, and actually use the fame of these men to crush those newartists whom to-morrow they will be lauding to the skies!

Christophe did not set any great store on his success. He knew that hewould one day win through: but he had not thought that the day could be sonear at hand: and he was distrustful of so rapid a triumph. He shruggedhis shoulders, and said that he wanted to be left alone. He could haveunderstood people applauding the _David_ the year before, when he wrote it:but now he was so far beyond it; he had climbed higher. He was inclined tosay to the people who came and talked about his old work:

"Don't worry me with that stuff. It disgusts me. So do you." And he plungedinto his new work again, rather annoyed at having been disturbed. However,he did feel a certain secret satisfaction. The first rays of the light offame are very sweet. It is good, it is healthy, to conquer. It is likethe open window and the first sweet scents of the spring coming into ahouse.--Christophe's contempt for his old work was of no avail, especiallywith regard to the _Iphigenia_: there was a certain amount of atonement forhim in seeing that unhappy production, which had originally brought himonly humiliation, belauded by the German critics, and in great requestwith the theaters, as he learned from a letter from Dresden, in which thedirectors stated that they would be glad to produce the piece during theirnext season.

* * * * *

The very day when Christophe received the news, which, after years ofstruggling, at last opened up a calmer horizon, with victory in thedistance, he had another letter from Germany.

It was in the afternoon. He was washing his face and talking gaily toOlivier in the next room, when the housekeeper slipped an envelope underthe door. His mother's writing.... He had been just on the point of writingto her, and was happy at the thought of being able to tell her of hissuccess, which would give her so much pleasure. He opened the letter. Therewere only a few lines. How shaky the writing was!

_"My dear boy, I am not very well. If it were possible, I should like to see you again. Love. "MOTHER."_

Christophe gave a groan. Olivier, who was working in the next room, ran tohim in alarm. Christophe could not speak, and pointed to the letter on thetable. He went on groaning, and did not listen to what Olivier said, whotook in the letter at a glance, and tried to comfort him. He rushed to hisbed, where he had laid his coat, dressed hurriedly, and without waiting tofasten his collar,--(his hands were trembling too much)--went out. Oliviercaught him up on the stairs: what was he going to do? Go by the firsttrain? There wasn't one until the evening. It was much better to wait therethan at the station. Had he enough money?--They rummaged through theirpockets, and when they counted all that they possessed between them, itonly amounted to thirty francs. It was September. Hecht, the Arnauds, alltheir friends, were out of Paris. They had no one to turn to. Christophewas beside himself, and talked of going part of the way on foot. Olivierbegged him to wait for an hour, and promised to procure the money somehow.Christophe submitted: he was incapable of a single idea himself. Olivierran to the pawnshop: it was the first time he had been there: for his ownsake, he would much rather have been left with nothing than pledge any ofhis possessions, which were all associated with some precious memory: butit was for Christophe, and there was no time to lose. He pawned his watch,for which he was advanced a sum much smaller than he had expected. Hehad to go home again and fetch some of his books, and take them to abookseller. It was a great grief to him, but at the time he hardly thoughtof it: his mind could grasp nothing but Christophe's trouble. He returned,and found Christophe just where he had left him, sitting by his desk, ina state of collapse. With their thirty francs the sum that Olivier hadcollected was more than enough. Christophe was too upset to think of askinghis friend how he had come by it, or whether he had kept enough to liveon during his absence. Olivier did not think of it either: he had givenChristophe all he possessed. He had to look after Christophe, just like achild, until it was time for him to go. He took him to the station, andnever left him until the train began to move.

In the darkness into which he was rushing Christophe sat wide-eyed, staringstraight in front of him and thinking:

"Shall I be in time?"

He knew that his mother must have been unable to wait for her to write tohim. And in his fevered anxiety he was impatient of the jolting speed ofthe express. He reproached himself bitterly for having left Louisa. Andat the same time he felt how vain were his reproaches: he had no power tochange the course of events.

However, the monotonous rocking of the wheels and springs of the carriagesoothed him gradually, and took possession of his mind, like tossing wavesof music dammed back by a mighty rhythm. He lived through all his pastlife again from the far-distant days of his childhood: loves, hopes,disillusion, sorrows,--and that exultant force, that intoxication ofsuffering, enjoying, and creating, that delight in blotting out the lightof life and its sublime shadows, which was the soul of his soul, the livingbreath of the God within him. Now as he looked back on it all was clear.His tumultuous desires, his uneasy thoughts, his faults, mistakes, andheadlong struggles, now seemed to him to be the eddy and swirl borne onby the great current of life towards its eternal goal. He discovered theprofound meaning of those years of trial: each test was a barrier which wasburst by the gathering waters of the river, a passage from a narrow to awider valley, which the river would soon fill: always he came to a widerview and a freer air. Between the rising ground of France and the Germanplain the river had carved its way, not without many a struggle, floodingthe meadows, eating away the base of the hills, gathering and absorbingall the waters of the two countries. So it flowed between them, not todivide, but to unite them: in it they were wedded. And for the first timeChristophe became conscious of his destiny, which was to carry through thehostile peoples, like an artery, all the forces of life of the two sides ofthe river.--A strange serenity, a sudden calm and clarity, came over him,as sometimes happens in the darkest hours.... Then the vision faded, and hesaw nothing but the tender, sorrowful face of his old mother.

It was hardly dawn when he reached the little German town. He had to takecare not to be recognized, for there was still a warrant of arrest outagainst him. But nobody at the station took any notice of him: the town wasasleep: the houses were shut up and the streets deserted: it was the grayhour when the lights of the night are put out and the light of day is notyet come,--the hour when sleep is sweetest and dreams are lit with the palelight of the east. A little servant-girl was taking down the shutters ofa shop and singing an old German folk-song. Christophe almost choked withemotion. O Fatherland! Beloved!... He was fain to kiss the earth as heheard the humble song that set his heart aching in his breast; he felt howunhappy he had been away from his country, and how much he loved it.... Hewalked on, holding his breath. When he saw his old house he was obligedto stop and put his hand to his lips to keep himself from crying out. Howwould he find his mother, his mother whom he had deserted?... He took along breath and almost ran to the door. It was ajar. He pushed it open. Noone there ... The old wooden staircase creaked under his footsteps. He wentup to the top floor. The house seemed to be empty. The door of his mother'sroom was shut.

Christophe's heart thumped as he laid his hand on the doorknob. And he hadnot the strength to open it....

* * * * *

Louisa was alone, in bed, feeling that the end was near. Of her two othersons, Rodolphe, the business man, had settled in Hamburg, the other,Ernest, had emigrated to America, and no one knew what had become of him.There was no one to attend to her except a woman in the house, who cametwice a day to see if Louisa wanted anything, stayed for a few minutes, andthen went about her business: she was not very punctual, and was often latein coming. To Louisa it seemed quite natural that she should be forgotten,as it seemed to her quite natural to be ill. She was used to suffering, andwas as patient as an angel. She had heart disease and palpitations, duringwhich she would think she was going to die: she would lie with her eyeswide open, and her hands clutching the bedclothes, and the sweat drippingdown her face. She never complained. She knew that it must be so. She wasready: she had already received the sacrament. She had only one anxiety:lest God should find her unworthy to enter into Paradise. She enduredeverything else in patience.

In a dark corner of her little room, near her pillow, on the wall of therecess, she had made a little shrine for her relics and trophies: she hadcollected the portraits of those who were dear to her: her three children,her husband, for whose memory she had always preserved her love in itsfirst freshness, the old grandfather, and her brother, Gottfried: she wastouchingly devoted to all those who had been kind to her, though it werenever so little. On her coverlet, close to her eyes, she had pinned thelast photograph of himself that Christophe had sent her: and his lastletters were under her pillow. She had a love of neatness and scrupuloustidiness, and it hurt her to know that everything was not perfectly inorder in her room. She listened for the little noises outside which markedthe different moments of the day for her. It was so long since she hadfirst heard them! All her life had been spent in that narrow space.... Shethought of her dear Christophe. How she longed for him to be there, nearher, just then! And yet she was resigned even to his absence. She was surethat she would see him again on high. She had only to close her eyes to seehim. She spent days and days, half-unconscious, living in the past....

She would see once more the old house on the banks of the Rhine.... Aholiday.... A superb summer day. The window was open: the white road laygleaming under the sun. They could hear the birds singing. Melchior and theold grandfather were sitting by the front-door smoking, and chatting andlaughing uproariously. Louisa could not see them: but she was glad thather husband was at home that day, and that grandfather was in such a goodtemper. She was in the basement, cooking the dinner: an excellent dinner:she watched over it as the apple of her eye: there was a surprise: achestnut cake: already she could hear the boy's shout of delight.... Theboy, where was he? Upstairs: she could hear him practising at the piano.She could not make out what he was playing, but she was glad to hear thefamiliar tinkling sounds, and to know that he was sitting there with hisgrave face.... What a lovely day! The merry jingling bells of a carriagewent by on the road.... Oh! good heavens! The joint! Perhaps it hadbeen burned while she was looking out of the window! She trembled lestgrandfather, of whom she was so fond, though she was afraid of him,should be dissatisfied, and scold her.... Thank Heaven! there was no harmdone. There, everything was ready, and the table was laid. She calledMelchior and grandfather. They replied eagerly. And the boy?... He hadstopped playing. His music had ceased a moment ago without her noticingit....--"Christophe!"... What was he doing? There was not a sound to beheard. He was always forgetting to come down to dinner: father was goingto scold him. She ran upstairs....--"Christophe!"... He made no sound.She opened the door of the room where he was practising. No one there.The room was empty, and the piano was closed.... Louisa was seized witha sudden panic. What had become of him? The window was open. Oh, Heaven!Perhaps he had fallen out! Louisa's heart stops. She leans out and looksdown....--"Christophe!"... He is nowhere to be found. She rushes all overthe house. Downstairs grandfather shouts to her: "Come along; don't worry;he'll come back." She will not go down: she knows that he is there: thathe is hiding for fun, to tease her. Oh, naughty, naughty boy!... Yes, sheis sure of it now: she heard the floor creak: he is behind the door. Shetries to open the door. But the key is gone. The key! She rummages througha drawer, looking for it in a heap of keys. This one, that.... No, notthat....Ah, that's it!... She cannot fit it into the lock, her hand istrembling so. She is in such haste: she must be quick. Why? She does notknow, but she knows that she must be quick, and that if she doesn't hurryshe will be too late. She hears Christophe breathing on the other side ofthe door.... Oh, bother the key!... At last! The door is opened. A cry ofjoy. It is he. He flings his arms round her neck.... Oh, naughty, naughty,good, darling boy!...

She has opened her eyes. He is there, standing by her.

For some time he had been standing looking at her; so changed she was, withher face both drawn and swollen, and her mute suffering made her smile ofrecognition so infinitely touching: and the silence, and her utterloneliness.... It rent his heart....

She saw him. She was not surprised. She smiled all that she could not say,a smile of boundless tenderness. She could not hold out her arms to him,nor utter a single word. He flung his arms round her neck and kissed her,and she kissed him: great tears were trickling down her cheeks. She said ina whisper:

"Wait...."

He saw that she could not breathe.

Neither stirred. She stroked his head with her hands, and her tears went ontrickling down her cheeks. He kissed her hands and sobbed, with his facehidden in the coverlet.

When her attack had passed she tried to speak. But she could not findwords: she floundered, and he could hardly understand her. But what didit matter? They loved each other, and were together, and could touch eachother: that was the main thing.--He asked indignantly why she was leftalone. She made excuses for her nurse:

"She cannot always be here: she has her work to do...."

In a faint, broken voice,--she could hardly pronounce her words,--she madea little hurried request about her burial. She told Christophe to give herlove to her two other sons who had forgotten her. And she seat a messageto Olivier, knowing his love for Christophe. She begged Christophe to tellhim that she sent him her blessing--(and then, timidly, she recollectedherself, and made use of a more humble expression),--"her affectionaterespects...."

Once more she choked. He helped her to sit up in her bed. The sweat drippeddown her face. She forced herself to smile. She told herself that she hadnothing more to wish for in the world, now that she had her son's handclasped in hers.

And suddenly Christophe felt her hand stiffen in his. Louisa opened herlips. She looked at her son with infinite tenderness:--so the end came.

III

In the evening of the same day Olivier arrived. He had been unable to bearthe thought of leaving Christophe alone in those tragic hours of which hehad had only too much experience. He was fearful also of the risks hisfriend was running in returning to Germany. He wanted to be with him, tolook after him. But he had no money for the journey. When he returned fromseeing Christophe off he made up his mind to sell the few family jewelsthat he had left: and as the pawnshop was closed at that hour, and hewanted to go by the next train, he was just going out to look for abroker's shop in the neighborhood when he met Mooch on the stairs. When thelittle Jew heard what he was about he was genuinely sorry that Olivier hadnot come to him: he would not let Olivier go to the broker's, and made himaccept the necessary money from himself. He was really hurt to think thatOlivier had pawned his watch and sold his books to pay Christophe's fare,when he would have been only too glad to help them. In his zeal for doingthem a service he even proposed to accompany Olivier to Christophe's home,and Olivier had great difficulty in dissuading him.

Olivier's arrival was a great boon to Christophe. He had spent the day,prostrated with grief, alone by his mother's body. The nurse had come,performed certain offices, and then had gone away and had never come back.The hours had passed in the stillness of death. Christophe sat there,as still as the body: he never took his eyes from his mother's face: hedid not weep, he did not think, he was himself as one dead.--Olivier'swonderful act of friendship brought him back to tears and life.

("Courage! Life; is worth all its suffering as long as there are faithfulfriends to weep with us.")

* * * * *

They clasped each other in a long embrace, and then sat by the dead woman'sside and talked in whispers. Night had fallen. Christophe, with his arms onthe foot of the bed, told random tales of his childhood's memories, inwhich his mother's image ever recurred. He would pause every now and thenfor a few minutes, and then go on again, until there came a pause when hestopped altogether, and his face dropped into his hands: he was utterlyworn out: and when Olivier went up to him, he saw that he was asleep. Thenhe kept watch alone. And presently he, too, was overcome by sleep, with hishead leaning against the back of the bed. There was a soft smile onLouisa's face, and she seemed happy to be watching over her two children.

* * * * *

In the early hours of the morning they were awakened by a knocking at thedoor. Christophe opened it. It was a neighbor, a joiner, who had come towarn Christophe that his presence in the town had been denounced, andthat he must go, if he did not wish to be arrested. Christophe refused tofly: he would not leave his mother before he had taken her to her lastresting-place. But Olivier begged him to go, and promised that he wouldfaithfully watch over her in his stead: he induced him to leave the house:and, to make sure of his not going back on his decision, went with him tothe station. Christophe refused point-blank to go without having a sightof the great river, by which he had spent his childhood, the mighty echoof which was preserved for ever within his soul as in a sea-shell. Thoughit was dangerous for him to be seen in the town, yet for his whim hedisregarded it. They walked along the steep bank of the Rhine, whichwas rushing along in its mighty peace, between its low banks, on to itsmysterious death in the sands of the North. A great iron bridge, looming